Life happens... and there's usually a soundtrack to it if you look hard enough.

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Breaking Bad - Felina: One little kiss and Felina, good-bye

A dying man in a snow-covered car with only an old Marty Robbins tape to keep him warm.

We've had a few days now to process the series finale to Breaking Bad and while initially it seemed there were two camps -- those that loved it for its closure and those that appreciated it but found it too tidy -- I've found myself, with a scant few, in a third camp.

This third camp starts in the 'too tidy' camp and intellectually works its way to the other camp by either re-interpreting or re-working creator Vince Gilligan's intentions. And it all starts with the episode's title and song it references.

Marty Robbins' song "El Paso" features a gun-toting narrator who's smitten for a Mexican girl named Feleena* and, in jealous rage, murders another of the maiden's suitors. Our narrator high tails it out of town, sequestering himself until his never-ending desire for Feleena draws him back to El Paso, where he is shot trying to make to see his infatuation one last time. One of the more relevant facts about this song is that the first-person narrative is being told by a dead man. Feleena miraculously is by his side as he dies, giving our anti-hero the closure he desires.

*Gilligan has stated he took liberties with the spelling to make it an anagram of 'finale.'

If you look at Feleena as a metaphor for Walter White's hopes and desires, the love he had for his time as Heisenberg is well apparent, and dying in the metaphorical arms of his precious meth lab only confirms this. This imagined death is much better than dying inside the volvo, a death more likely to have happened.

And this is where I left this post off at the time of the writing, before becoming entangled in the 'day job' again. I'm posting 'as is' to both preserve the moment and to provide this dying blog a pulse, however faint.